by Melissa Marr
When we lived in Algiers Point, roommates for real then, I roamed at night. There was something joyous in that, creeping through yards and sliding into tree tops and onto roofs. I felt magical, and I saw a part of the world that I missed now that we were on the other side of the river.
As a kid in the Outs, in what was once a town called Slidell, I didn’t know that the things that made me that way were monstrous. As a twenty-year-old, I was in denial. I told myself it was how witches were. When I was twenty-four, I found out about the necrophilia that resulted in my mother’s pregnancy. I was disgusted—not with my mother for screwing a dead guy, but with myself for being the child of a dead guy.
My mother’s ability to rationalize anything meant she thought she wasn’t lying all those times when she said my father was dead. I could see her argument to a point, but I guess I wanted to think he’d been alive when I was conceived. I had no words for my shock. Sure, there were people who slept with draugr. I’d thought they were the ones who looked macabre or something. My mom was the sweetest, liveliest person I’d met. She grew herbs and tended flowers. I mean, if there was ever a human stand-in for a cartoon princess with birds and mice at her side, that was my mother.
I would never understand how she decided to sleep with a corpse.
They were a “fling.” It was “just a thing that happened.” They “would’ve had a chance,” but he “refused to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle.” That one I couldn’t even process. Draugr required blood. When I asked if she meant eating actual vegetables or eating vegetable eaters instead of people, she was mad enough that she didn’t speak to me for a month.
Mom had her version of answers; I had anger. Either way, she forbade me from seeing him—and him from seeing me.
But he came to see me when I turned twenty-five, and I killed him.
Mom and I have still not recovered from that, but the last thing I wanted was a dead—as well as deadbeat—dad. Maybe he wasn’t always a monster. Mom argued that he was a good-hearted man once. Maybe there was a time and place where he was different. All I knew was that his plans for me were the sort of thing that would get any man or monster shot.
I shoved that line of thought away and stared at the ceiling, letting my brain slide into that space that was my version of sleeping. It was a lot easier during the day when the light was so bright that I wanted to close my eyes anyhow. Nights were hard. My body wanted to roam. My mind was active.
But at some point, I must have actually drifted into sleep because I felt the sunrise at the same time as my door opened.
“Dawn. Get up.” Jesse stood there pelting me with grapes. There was a reason for that. After I’d gone from sound asleep to crouched over him with a knife at his neck when we were twenty and roommates, he’d taken to throwing things like grapes, candy or, my least favorite pick to date, canned vegetables. Who liked to have slippery, slimy, wax beans tossed in their face?
“You’re lucky I don’t wake you this way,” I muttered, eyes still closed.
Jesse laughed. “Feeding me grapes for breakfast? Oh, the horror! Your threats are so scary, Gen. I quake in . . .”
I was up, plucking a fruity projectile out of the air and shoving a grape in his mouth at a speed I wouldn’t have willingly shared yesterday unless it was to protect him.
“. . . fear,” he finished around the grape in his mouth. Then he grinned, popped a grape into my mouth and added, “Con Crew should be here in about five minutes.”
I spat out the grape. “Five. . .? What the fuck, Jesse! You couldn’t wake me?”
“You aren’t usually asleep at night, so how would I know you slept?” He turned and walked away. “Do you want water or vodka for breakfast?”
“So, we’re just going to put it all on the table? You need to show me how much you figured out?”
“Best. Friend.” He called back at me. “Very fucking patient best friend, I might add.”
I followed him.
“I waited. I waited some more. I hinted. You pretended. So”—he tossed another grape at me with no warning—"yeah.”
I dodged, and the grape landed with a plink on the wooden floor of the room. I scooped it up and teased, “I might have liked you more when I thought you were stupid.”
Jesse gave me an incredulous look. “My apartment is filled with plants and hardwood floors on every room. Do you honestly think I accidentally created a nest for you? Magic core elements in every room. Nature-filled. Salt-lined windows. And your mattress is filled with sacred earth and lavender.”
My mouth dropped open.
“You rest well in your room because I figured out what Mama Lauren used in your mattress at home,” Jesse explained as if I was the one who was utterly sans clues. He wasn’t magic, but he’d trailed behind my mother at my side often enough that I wasn’t able to be shocked that he’d figured out what she’d stuffed in my mattress.
I gaped at him, though. “How did you get the soil?”
“It’s harder to get that much stealthily these days, so I was bringing it back a satchel at time, but…I know a guy. He brought a pickup bed full, and I carried it upstairs.” He held out a glass of straight vodka. “And little by little I add it to your mattress at your apartment, too.”
The buzzer downstairs saved me from needing to reply. A quick look at the street cam revealed the local Con Crew standing at the rolldown. Jesse pushed a few buttons on his remote. It had codes for every door, window, rolldown, as well as for the security boxes for books in the shop.
I snagged the bottle of vodka from Jesse’s kitchen counter and one of my holsters. Then we went down to welcome them into the store.
Unlike the night before, I hung back from the front of the shop. The first few hours of daylight had started to make me queasy over the last year or so. It wasn’t impossible to handle, but I saw no need to get too close to the door and that disgusting brightness.
I slid my sunglasses on and leaned into the doorway.
“Hang-over again, Gen?” one of the guys teased.
I lifted the bottle of vodka. “Still drinking.”
If I wanted to actually get a buzz, I’d drink one of those fruity drinks with a slice or two of citrus or cherries in it. Or eat the grapes Jesse was noshing on like they were a breakfast food.
“Don’t see any point in being sober when the dead guy is properly dead,” I added. “He can’t hurt me now. So, l’chaim!”
“Is that a spell?”
“No, man. It’s Hebrew,” the second member of the Con Crew, Gary, said lightly. “Gen’s a Jewish witch.”
“A . . . what?”
“My Jewish mother found Pan or Gaia or something, so she raised me both. It makes for complicated holidays,” I said cheerily. “Also, L’chaim means ‘to life.’”
“To life, kid.” Gary echoed. Then he shook his head and looked at the blue-tarped body with its duct tape seal. “That our corpse?”
I nodded.
“If you keep putting tarps down before you kill them, Gen, they look premeditated.” Gary said.
“Jesse was about to dust the fans.” I pointed up at the gently spinning, dust-free fans. “Don’t want to get dirt on the books, do we?”
Gary and the other guy whose name I hadn’t learned yet both looked at me and sighed. Then Gary asked, “You think you have your magicked-up bullets and that’s enough?”
“Nah, I think I’m a witch with a few sharp swords,” I said. “No law against killing draugr.”
“That all you kill?”
I shrugged. “If I find something or someone trying to hurt innocents while I’m strolling home from the bar, I’m going to do my civic duty.”
Gary looked at Jesse, who was staying silent.
At that, Gary shook his head. “Not your responsibility to save the city, Gen.”
I shrugged. I kind of felt like it was. I had gifts. If I didn’t find some way to use them, wasn’t I as bad as a monster? I slid one of my swords out. “Steel and silver.” I tilted i
t so the shop lights bounced off it. “With spells embedded in the silver. And you know what my rounds do to a draugr.”
Gary sighed again. “Try not to die, kid, okay? I know you’ve been lucky, but you aren’t always going to be fast enough.”
I nodded because I did try not to lie more than necessary. Omitting details was a lot easier than outright lying. I mean, I could lie. I just felt guilt when I did it, so I tried to keep my lies to a minimum. Killing, on the other hand, didn’t bother me at all.
I didn’t know what that meant about me. I thought about it a lot, and I guess I was coping by living a blend of my mother’s faith and my own Jewish leanings. In both cases, there was an idea that we were here to make the world a better place. Nothing wrong with other faiths, but those that focused on a hell or heaven as a motivator weren’t a good match for me. I wasn’t likely to ever be able to knock on any extra-worldly doors, and even if I could, I didn’t really dig the notion that my choices ought to be guided by carrots or sticks.
I might not know why an abomination like me existed, but I figured there was a Plan. I just needed to try to make the best of it. Be a force of good in the world. Silly, maybe, but that was my goal.
Not like I was so arrogant to think I was a soldier for some higher being, no great mission or role for me. But I was here, and I had skills, so I used them. The way I used them was often brutal, like Torah and Christian Old Testament brutal, but to suggest only forgiveness in the face of hate or murderous intent was a stance that was not for me. I preferred an old-fashioned sword to the throat or heart most days. When that wasn’t viable, I went for my modified rounds and a reliable pistol.
I killed more monsters with bloody, cold violence than magic—although I let the New Orleans Police Department think otherwise.
My magic was earth-based. My rounds worked because they healed, and the life of it was incompatible with draugr. It was also why the dead woke after my magic flashed out. It was why they regrew their flesh and followed me like puppies needing a home. Somehow, I was born of magic and death, but my magic was life giving.
No one asked a lot of questions, though, so I kept that tidbit to myself. I was what I was, and I trusted that I was working to make the world a better place. It let me sleep well most nights.
Today, Jesse stayed at my side as we watched them tote the tarp-wrapped draugr into their wagon. There was one other there, but it was rare to see more than a couple of them sent off to the incinerator. Once they were bagged, tagged, and delivered, the Con Crew would toss them in the re-purposed cremation facility, and then once a day, all the ashes would be mixed with sacred soil and scattered in a field designated for that purpose.
The paranoia about the regenerative skills of their sort led to a lot of safeguards.
And I understood it. The wrong sort of bullets did little damage, but figuring out the right way to injure them required a captive draugr —or someone foolish enough to test new rounds on the street.
“Gary,” I called out, carefully avoiding going too far into the sunlight. It didn’t injure me. I just disliked the headaches that it left behind. I beckoned him over.
Then, stealthily, I held out a few of my newest high caliber rounds. “Just keep these in your back-up gun in case one of them isn’t all the way dead.”
Gary looked at me, scowled. “My paycheck doesn’t come close to covering those.”
“Then it’s your gift for not asking a lot of questions,” I said casually. After so many pick-ups lately, I’d seen Gary more than most of my friends that month. “And . . . if there are any rogue draugr that you hear about, I’d like a call.”
He looked at me in what I supposed was meant to be a fatherly way. I hadn’t had that experience from my actual father, who was more interested in discussing my abnormalities and breeding me with a few of his kind to see what we could “add” to my theoretical offspring.
“Try to stay alive,” Gary murmured, but he took the proffered rounds in his hand.
It was as close to agreeing to my terms as I could hope. “You, too,” I said. “I wouldn’t like it if you died.”
The police in New Orleans were peculiar. It took a special sort of person to want to work here. We had a higher population of dead things than anywhere else in the nation. I couldn’t fathom what drove most men and women to come here seeking work. I was here because there were no other options, but many of the police officers chose it. They got signing bonuses, and the pay was incredible, but it was a gamble. The mortality rate was high. Every time I saw them, it was always a chance it would be the last time.
Gary and his newest partner left, and I hoped they’d still be living next time I called for a pick-up. They might not consider my job the same as theirs if they knew about it, but I felt like we were connected.
Jesse closed the door and locked it. The store wouldn’t open for another hour or so. Most everyone in the city started their work day not long after the sunrise. Come dusk, the sidewalk might as well be rolled up and tucked away.
“I’m going to grab a mop, and—”
“I’m out.” I flashed him a grin and kissed his cheek. Then I went upstairs to grab one of my books, my bag, and a pair of the special-order dark glasses I had stashed here. Getting home before I had to face the midday sun would decrease my odds of another migraine. It was go now or stay until afternoon.
When I came downstairs, Jesse had a mop and bucket in hand. There was no ooze from the death. His floor was fine, but I understood the impulse. Cleaning up after a murder seemed reasonable.
“You could stay and watch me clean,” Jesse said in that light voice he adopted more and more with me. It made me feel like I suspected a feral cat would, intrigued but not exactly eager to chance it.
“Nope. I’m going over a few job things. The last dead guy was injected. His son thinks it was what killed him.”
Jesse stuffed the mop into the bucket and watched me. “I don’t like how Eli looks at you, but if something’s weird out there . . . well, weirder than normal, I’m glad you’re taking him with you.”
“Eli’s not bad,” I pointed out.
“He wants to get my little sister naked. It’s my sibling right to want to punch him.” Jesse grinned.
“Little sister?”
“Two months, Gen. My birthday is a full two months before yours. It counts.”
“Whatever.” I grabbed the vodka and took another drink. “Thanks for breakfast, Jesse.”
Then I slipped my glasses on and headed out the door. Tomorrow, I would get back my phone and start to see what I had to do and where I was going next.
Today, though, I was going to visit my mother. I wasn’t going to tell Jesse in case he decided to tag along, but I needed maternal insight on what was wrong with my magic. If anyone in the world had theories about my fucked-up biology, it would be Mama Lauren.
Chapter Fourteen
I walked to the bus depot and boarded one of the three buses headed across Lake Pontchartrain over to what we now called the “Outs.” The driver, a man with plenty of tattoos and a few wrinkles, had a shotgun jutting out the left window. It was mounted in what appeared to be a homemade rig that would give steadiness and wide range to shoot anything on the left of the bus. Soldered to the driver’s chair on the right was a holster. Stepping onto the bus meant the pistol was eye-level to each passenger. The driver’s hand rested on the butt of the gun. If anything unwelcome entered the bus door, he could stop it—or at least stall it. I suppose it depended on what was loaded in the chambers of the revolver.
Most busses weren’t driven by folks who were so public with their weapons. I paused and gestured at the guns. “Expecting problems?”
“Not lately, but I do like to take precautions.” He motioned to my weapons belt. A short sword and gun hung on either side of my hips. He asked, “You? Running from or toward trouble?”
“Neither. Just prepared if trouble crosses my path.”
We exchanged nods, and I walked to the back
of the bus, glad I was early enough to avoid walking through a crowded bus with weapons visible. Sometimes people got nervous at the sight of me. I blamed it on my weapons, but Jesse argued that I simply don’t smile enough.
Several busses crossed the ghost zone on day trips to the outskirts every morning around dawn. They started bringing people back mid-afternoon. Despite the inherent appeal of nature, no one stayed out of New Orleans after dusk. There was no sheriff, no police, and the few souls who lived in the Outs were mostly unpredictable.
Jesse and I grew up in the Outs, so I was at ease there—despite the “Wild West” attitude that prevailed in the Outs. It was home, and weird as fuck or boring as watching paint dry, home was always special in some way. I grinned at the thought of being barefoot in a field in a few short hours.
The bus crossed through the city walls into the ghost zone. It was the first casualty of the draugr reveal. A few people dismembered at a park-and-ride lot made international news. Draugr had existed for centuries, but for reasons no one knew, one random Thursday a bunch of violent newly-infected dead folks started attacking across the country. People moved in mass exodus to cities, and a lot of cities had found ways to be completely draugr free.
Blood tests. Wealth. And a shit ton of laws. Those cities weren’t for me—and to be completely honest, even if my blood was pure, I wouldn’t trade my weapons for such an existence. Walls were made to go over or under, and the idea of total trust in any faceless governing body made me cringe.
Others had vacated entire towns. Either way, the suburbs were completely emptied in mere weeks. Too widespread to wall and too filled with anxiety to stay. Every city had a ghost zone now—and draugr claimed whichever vacant houses they wanted.
People watched out closed windows anxiously. A few draugr watched the bus from the shaded porches of stolen houses. And I tried not to shudder at the feeling of so very many dead things gathered near.
The more miles between New Orleans and the lake, the more open it was. Windows opened, and the unmistakable scents of nature filled the bus. Trees, soil, and flowers. It was a kind of dizzying perfume that cities couldn’t offer. Beyond the ghost zone was the Outs—where I had been born and raised.